Abstract

This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web:
the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web
application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring
practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user
agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

Status of This document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other
documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest
revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at
http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This specification is a Superseded Recommendation.
A newer
specification exists that is recommended for new adoption in place of
this specification.

The W3C HTML Working Group is the W3C working group
responsible for this specification's progress.

A comprehensive test suite for this specification is maintained and kept up to date as part of
the WebPlatform Tests project.

Work on evolutions of this specification proceeds at
http://www.w3.org/TR/html/. The HTML5 Recommendation
represents a milestone in the development of HTML but far from being the end of the road and
improvements are already well under way. It is possible that future versions will no longer be
published as a monolithic specification but rather as a set of smaller modules. Irrespective of
whether that is the case or not, http://www.w3.org/TR/html/
will be maintained as the entry point to the entirety of HTML technology.

Work on extending this specification typically proceeds through
extension specifications
which should be consulted to see what new features are being reviewed.

The bulk of the text of this specification is also available in the WHATWG
HTML Living
Standard, under a license that permits reuse of the specification text.

This document has been reviewed by W3C Members, by software developers, and by other W3C groups
and interested parties, and is endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation.

Work on this specification is also done at the WHATWG. The
W3C HTML working group actively pursues convergence of the HTML specification with the WHATWG
living standard, within the bounds of the W3C
HTML working group charter. There are various ways to follow this work at the WHATWG:

The following editorial changes were made since Proposed Recommendation:

The manner in which updates to this specification will be published was clarified.

The IANA registration for application/xhtml+xml was accepted during PR, leading to a small update to the corresponding section.

"Decoder error" was mistakenly listed as a URL-related definition when
it is in fact Encoding-related

"Parsed URL" has been given a proper mapping to the URL specification

Improved the informative summary for several elements. (Mostly pointers to tag omission and ARIA rules.)

Updated a few references to documents that have seen new revisions (RFC4281, RFC2313, RFC3490, MPEG-DASH) and provided a more stable link to BECSS.

Added a note about and made some modifications to the URL reference.

A number of small styling tweaks were made and typos were fixed.

For purposes of the W3C Patent Policy, this Superseded Recommendation
has the same status as an active Recommendation; it retains licensing
commitments and remains available as a reference for old -- and
possibly still deployed -- implementations, but is not recommended for
future implementation. New implementations should follow the latest version
of the HTML specification.